Best Way To Organize Digital Kits, Elements, Etc?

As a "newbie" to digital scrapbooking (I've only made four pages so far) I have LOTS of questions.

The most pressing concern I have at this time is HOW to organize all the "stuff" I have been collecting over the past two months. I have gobs of papers, kits, elements, etc. that I've purchased and I've found lots of freebies online, too.

Currently I have folders for "kits", "papers", "elements", "alphas", etc. (see attached photo of folders I've created) Within many of the folders I break stuff down into more specific sub-folders... for instance in my paper folder, I have "red/orange", "blue", "aqua", "yellow/gold", etc. I've done the same thing with elements... "ribbons/string", "clusters", "templates", "brads/buttons", "frames" etc. BUT.... when it comes to creating a new scrapbook page, I've got all those "things" in separate folders and it's hard for me to pull everything together to achieve a certain theme. I'm assuming I should leave the "kits" intact as they are inspirational in themselves and color coordinated, too. In most cases I have left them intact but then pulled "copies" of the kit's contents into the other sub-folders I created. However, I also have hundreds of individual items that were never part of kits. It's quite overwhelming to start a scrap page having to scan through tons of papers, elements, etc.

I'd be most grateful for any advice other scrappers can give me on how they organize their "stash" of digital stuff. --> What works for you?
Also, I'd like to thank everyone again for warm welcome I received in the "Meet & Greet" post.

I try to use as few sub-folders as possible to make finding things easier.
When I sort by collection, I put the entire collection into one folder with the alpha in a sub-folder. That way I can view the thumbnails and see the whole thing without a lot of extra clicks.
When I sort by embellishment type, I have my papers with color sub-folders. I create a folder for anything I have a lot of. Arrows, Animals, Buttons, Brackets, Brads, Flowers, Frames - when I'm choosing flowers, I scroll through the flower folder and choose what works for my page.

It works for me. I'm a dork and sort both ways, but if I had to choose just one, it would be by collection. I know a lot of people use picasa for finding embellishments. There is no right or wrong way. Use the way that makes sense for you and makes it easier for you to find the products you need.

I try to use as few sub-folders as possible to make finding things easier. When I sort by collection, I put the entire collection into one folder with the alpha in a sub-folder. That way I can view the thumbnails and see the whole thing without a lot of extra clicks.When I sort by embellishment type, I have my papers with color sub-folders. I create a folder for anything I have a lot of. Arrows, Animals, Buttons, Brackets, Brads, Flowers, Frames - when I'm choosing flowers, I scroll through the flower folder and choose what works for my page.

It works for me. I'm a dork and sort both ways, but if I had to choose just one, it would be by collection. I know a lot of people use picasa for finding embellishments. There is no right or wrong way. Use the way that makes sense for you and makes it easier for you to find the products you need.

Thank you so much, April. What do you mean by "collection"? Its that the same thing as a "kit"? I believe I'm the bigger dork... it's obvious! LOL!

Hi Tracey! Yes, by collection she means kit. I sort by both as well, but slightly different. I have all of my collections together, and then as sub folders, I have Papers, Embellishments, Alphas, and WordArt. Recently I started a folder called Inspirations because so many of the designers are including sample layouts with their collections. I use Picasa, but in any search, I can search by collection and see all the matching pieces, or search by type of item (i.e. papers, embellishments, etc.) and see all of those kind of pieces from all of my collections. In this way, I don't need duplicates of my files.

Thank you so much, April. What do you mean by "collection"? Its that the same thing as a "kit"? I believe I'm the bigger dork... it's obvious! LOL!

Yes that is what April means, Collections, kit, minis etc lots of names for all the same thing! And I organize pretty much the same as April LOL! I find having all the embellishments sorted separately makes it so I can look for something I specifically want all together in ONE spot like say buttons?? !!

Thank you for all the great advice. It seems I need to look into this Picasa site. I thought it was simply a photo-sharing site, so I'm still a bit confused as to how you all are using it to "store" and "access" your digital files. I'll rummage around on the site today and see if I can figure it out. You have all been so helpful! Thank you and have a great, creative weekend :-)

I used to split collections by type: paper by color, embellishment by type, alpas, frames, etc. but I found it hard to scrap because everything was in separate folders. So now I keep everyting in one folder for a collection. In Photoshop Elements in the Organizer I tag the elements by type with keywords, like paper by color, or embelishment by type like flowers/ribbons/butterflies, etc.